


no one's better than you

by binoculars



Category: Father Ted
Genre: Fluff, Gen, sometimes during conversation a friend will say "this sounds like something from seinfeld", this is a little like that but with less arguing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 23:44:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15400236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binoculars/pseuds/binoculars
Summary: ted is honestly, really, just about to start crime and punishment, just after he finishes this one thing. his almost-reading is interrupted by dougal and a surreal conversation.





	no one's better than you

Father Ted sat in his pastel armchair and guiltily flipped through a magazine. His shame had nothing to do with its contents; it came from the fact that he had told himself he would start Crime and Punishment after a cup of tea, then after a magazine, then after more tea… this was his third time round, and he started to wonder what he would stoop to reading to avoid the punishment of that book.  
  
He flipped a page and studied the composition of a picture of lemonade. He thought about career opportunities in marketing.  
  
“Hullo, Ted.”  
  
Ted closed the magazine, and then, finding a sensual picture of a woman’s face on the cover, flipped it over. There was a similar picture on the back, and he nonchalantly placed his hands on top.  
  
Dougal noticed none of this and sat on the arm of the chair.  
  
“What are you doing?” he asked.  
  
“Reading,” Ted replied, and opened it to the picture of lemonade again. His thoughts flicked from the butterfly effect, to graph theory, and got stuck on an embarrassing childhood memory.  
  
Dougal gestured at the two pages of advertisements. “What are you reading?” he asked, and leaned heavily on Ted’s shoulder as if proximity equalled understanding.  
  
Ted pushed him back and let him find his balance before flipping the page. “I’m reading about the genetics of middle management,” he said.  
  
“Why?” Dougal asked, and then, sliding down the chair’s arm and mostly onto Ted, “Whoops.” He looked down, and at the bookcase, and at the spot on the wall that looked like a depressed hotdog before he looked back at Ted. “Hullo, T-”  
  
“Dougal, why don’t you sit over there?”  
  
“Ah, there’s a man living in the couch.” Dougal looked at the hotdog stain and wondered why it was so sad.  
  
“Sorry, could you repeat that?”  
  
“I said, there’s a man-”  
  
“Is he,” Ted started, put the magazine on the table, swallowed, then started again. “How long has he-?”  
  
“Well, when I say there’s a man in the couch, I mean if there was a man there, I wouldn’t want to sit on him,” Dougal said.  
  
“But is there a man there?”  
  
“No, Ted.”  
  
“So why don’t you sit over there?” Ted thought about a roundabout where every road leading out of it leads straight back to it.  
  
“You can’t see the window from over there.”  
  
Ted looked at Dougal with concern, conjuring up someone that Dougal had had a fight with and wanted to be able to see coming, or something like that. “Why d’you want to see the window?”  
  
Dougal stared at the hotdog stain and wondered if its family had died. Maybe it had become an alcoholic while dealing with its grief and was coming to terms with how royally it had mucked up its life. He looked back at Ted.  
  
“What?”  
  
Ted thought about the roundabout and off-road cars. “Dougal, don’t lie to me, why don’t you want to sit over there?”  
  
“Ah, because, ah,” Dougal looked at the ceiling like he’d been asked a difficult question on a quiz show, “because you’re not over there.” He nodded to show that it was his final answer.  
  
Ted crashed his metaphorical off-road car into a metaphorical wall. Dougal watched him shelve a quiz show’s-worth of questions to the back of his head and repress about five kinds of affection.  
  
“Why don’t we both sit over there, then,” said Ted, who, though not always good at it, was a problem-solver at heart  
  
“All right,” said Dougal, “I get the corner.” He went and sat at the corner, grabbing the magazine Ted had put down. Ted, left with no choice, picked up Crime and Punishment and sat down shoulder-to-shoulder, leg-to-leg. He opened the book and paused.  
  
“My bookmark’s moved.”  
  
“Yeah, I was reading it.”  
  
Ted mentally listed ten categories of Latin verbs before he felt he was ready to engage.  
  
“How did you feel about it?”  
  
“Ha, I don’t have enough context for the period it was written in to make that analysis, Ted,” Dougal said, as if Ted were trying to make him give a silly answer. “Why, what did you think?”  
  
Ted, suddenly on the defense, floundered for a bit, then started, “That’s an-.” He stopped short. He felt something moving in the couch.

**Author's Note:**

> title from the song "The Whole World and You" by Tally Hall. this is my second try at writing these characters and it's been very enjoyable! the show has a sweetness to it that's hard to describe. i'm supposed to be writing a short film and i worked on this instead. i'm really behind


End file.
